Don’t Mess With My Bacon, Egg and Cheese

It is a hero among sandwiches, although it is not the one called a hero. It is not called by any name that everybody agrees on, although it sometimes appears on menus as the breakfast sandwich.

A name isn’t necessary in conversation because nobody bothers to talk about it, even though the sandwich makes the first few hours of the working day in New York City possible. Almost everybody has untucked one from its double wrapping of wax paper and foil, but almost nobody mentions it unless an order for one is being placed. This is done by means of an ingredients list, each permutation a variation on the theme of eggs, cheese and bread product, with or without breakfast meats:

One egg over easy with ham and cheese on rye toast.

Two fried egg whites and cheese on an everything bagel.

Or, in the classic and possibly highest formulation: bacon, scrambled eggs and cheese on a roll.

This last version at least has an abbreviation, the BEC, which is shorthand like BLT, a sandwich much more famous than the BEC. Still, the three letters together apparently have enough recognition that they are about to become the name of a breakfast-sandwich restaurant to open soon in Chelsea. BEC patrons who want the meat on the sandwich to be lamb sausage and the cheese to be feta will ask for a Greeky Roman. Those who would prefer Serrano ham and manchego will order a Spicy Spaniard. Of course, a classic BEC will also be available, served on what the menu calls a “custom brioche.”

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No doubt the brioche will be golden and soft, and the feta will have its briny charms. BEC’s sandwiches may turn out to be terrific across the board. But they will not be a substitute in any way for the classic unreconstructed version. This is one sandwich that is not necessarily improved by better cheese.

Egg sandwiches are found all around the country in one form or another: on a biscuit in the South, maybe; with Taylor pork roll in New Jersey, for sure. The ones in New York City, though, have a character of their own. What makes them New Yorky is not the ingredients, but the way the sandwich is purchased and consumed: quickly.

The sandwich, being designed to satisfy practical needs rather than voluptuary desires, has to be ready fast. Its customers will not stand still for the unaccountably long waiting-around times that espresso drinkers now submit to.

It is in the interest of speed, too, that the sandwich’s purveyors are everywhere. Ask a New Yorker where this morning’s ham, cheese and three scrambled eggs on a toasted roll came from, and the answer will be “that cart outside my office” or “that bagel shop by the subway” or “that bodega with boxes of Tide stacked in the window,” whose name, if anybody took the trouble to ask, would turn out to be something like “404 Deli Corp L.L.C.”

These ubiquitous sandwich makers are as anonymous as the sandwich itself. Neither craves recognition, let alone fame, a place on some 10-things-you-must-eat-before-you-die listicle. But really, nobody would think of writing such a list because the whole point of the classic unreconstructed egg and something on a roll is that it should basically be the same everywhere.

The city being a large place, of course, quality can vary. Last year, a New Yorker devoted to breakfast sandwiches raised money on Kickstarter to print leaflets that set forth minimum standards for making them. The list, which was to be distributed to delis and carts across town, reveals how little New Yorkers ask of a foil-wrapped breakfast. The third request is “cheese in every bite.” The ninth asks, quite reasonably, for advance warning if the bacon being used is turkey bacon. There is no demand for meats and cheeses imported from Europe, or for custom brioche, only a plea that the bread or roll “taste fresh.”

In fact, any attempts to make the morning egg sandwich purveyors get dressed up and march in a fancy-food parade with the celebrity doughnut shops, the chef-engineered burger joints and so forth are missing the point. New Yorkers are loyal to the sandwich because it is loyal to them. It chases off any remaining morning demons and clears the way for whatever fresh demons are waiting at work.

Trying to improve the breakfast sandwich by spending more on the bacon is like telling a fireman who just dragged four children out of a burning house to change his shirt before going on the evening news.

The great virtue of the bacon, egg and cheese on a roll, or its variations, is in what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t divide New Yorkers by class, income or neighborhood. It doesn’t seek publicity. It doesn’t convey status or bragging rights. It just conveys nutrition and, if you need it, settles your nerves. It is a secret handshake that New Yorkers exchange, not with one another, but with the city.